117 replies to this topic

[Corporal Flashback]

So I found an old copy of Altered Beast on PS2 today and had a play. I didn't get too far last time, but I honestly really like it. The weakest part is of course the combat, which isn't much more than a very primitive 3D button masher, but it does the job, feeling more dated than bad to me. After that, there's the visual design of the levels and the creatures, the former looking like a mega-generic almost-PSone fest, and the latter literally just humans/bats/ravens/rats increased in size or corpsified in the most half-arsed/cliched way ever.

BUT

I really do like the game as a whole. It has a light touch of Metroidvania about it (though so far there's only one "pickup" (Stat points) in the whole game), the dungeons aren't too long (though might be a bit too short), and it's got a simple stat-improvement system where you can unlock new moves and combos for your ltered forms. Additionally, I think it's got some real character about it despite the generic visuals, mainly because of the attention to detail in the transformations: exploding eyes, breaking fingers, dissolving skin, even a head-breaking-apart-to-reveal-another-underneath shindig in one case, with each transformation using a different FMV clip each time. And the music, while repetitive, is distinctive with some great use of a theremin. The cherry on top are unlockable bestiary entries for enemies and altered forms (I've always loved stuff like that), a gallery and unlockable bonus transformations.

Yeah, it'd rarely score above a 4/10 with most people, but despite all its shortcomings, I'm enjoying it far, far more than the well-produced God of War-em-ups all over the place these days.

[Gabe]

So I found an old copy of Altered Beast on PS2 today and had a play. I didn't get too far last time, but I honestly really like it. The weakest part is of course the combat, which isn't much more than a very primitive 3D button masher, but it does the job, feeling more dated than bad to me. After that, there's the visual design of the levels and the creatures, the former looking like a mega-generic almost-PSone fest, and the latter literally just humans/bats/ravens/rats increased in size or corpsified in the most half-arsed/cliched way ever.

BUT

I really do like the game as a whole. It has a light touch of Metroidvania about it (though so far there's only one "pickup" (Stat points) in the whole game), the dungeons aren't too long (though might be a bit too short), and it's got a simple stat-improvement system where you can unlock new moves and combos for your ltered forms. Additionally, I think it's got some real character about it despite the generic visuals, mainly because of the attention to detail in the transformations: exploding eyes, breaking fingers, dissolving skin, even a head-breaking-apart-to-reveal-another-underneath shindig in one case, with each transformation using a different FMV clip each time. And the music, while repetitive, is distinctive with some great use of a theremin. The cherry on top are unlockable bestiary entries for enemies and altered forms (I've always loved stuff like that), a gallery and unlockable bonus transformations.

Yeah, it'd rarely score above a 4/10 with most people, but despite all its shortcomings, I'm enjoying it far, far more than the well-produced God of War-em-ups all over the place these days.

I found the worst crime of Altered Beast was that it was dull (and the final boss is just rubbish).

I actually didn't mind both Genji titles. The PS2 game was short and sweet but was a very superficial experience. The PS3 game (enemy crabs and massive damage notwithstanding) added a bit more depth, upped the visuals and was a competent hack-and-slash - though it also increased the playtime, to its detriment. I still enjoyed it though.

[MrHendo]

There's the obvious answer of Deadly Premonition which on a technical level is often pretty awful but is also one of the best games this generation.

A lot of people slated (or maybe didn't play) Wii Music but I loved it, found it to be genius and a whole new way of doing a music game rather than the usual glorified QTE's.

[Stanley]

Wii Music is amazing.

[moosegrinder]

I like all sorts of crap no bugger else does, but I'm fucked if I can remember any of it now.
Zombie Virus on the PS2 was a 'guilty' pleasure (I don't believe in such things, why should you feel guilty about something. Unless it's something evil like necrophilia or mainstream pop music). Crazy Taxi meets House of the Dead, it was shoddy as you like but good fun.
Fuel is another one. Not so much crap as a bit mediocre, I enjoyed the shit out of it.

[tssk]

The first couple of levels of Minority Report on the PS2 where you are throwing people through windows. It was like they ignored the movie and decided to base it on dumb 80's stunt shows.

[Faded]

Dark sector is probably my favourite third person shooter ever.

[Qazimod]

Hmm, I'll try and avoid the usual answers I give (Rumble Racing, Nier) and go for something a little different. I present Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.



If I recall it got something like 4/10 in Edge, and I don't think I would go so far as to say I love it. The presentation and story is very simple and twee, the gameworld is pretty basic with not much room to explore, the minigames aren't tied in to the story very well, the characters are idiots. Despite all that, I kind of like what it tried to do. The abundance of minigames at least offered a bit more variety compared to more typical JRPGs and the card battle/collection system is quite simple but still quite tactical. By completing minigames you would get certain cards which can be used in battle. Each card has four coloured circles, with some of these circles containing a sword or shield. You and your opponent pick a card, and if you show, for example, a card with a sword on the red circle, you will damage the opponent if they show a card with nothing on the red circle. Shields will null sword attacks, whilst two sword symbols on the same circle will result in half-damage.

Cards also contain more detailed properties - some will poison or burn an opponent which will increase damage taken from certain colours, others will make them wait longer for their turn - and the game places more emphasis on collecting cards in minigames rather than grinding and levelling, so it doesn't take much to progress. I think that if someone tweaked the battle system - maybe adding more than four colours and a whole load of new attack properties - and made the story a bit less twee, it could make for an interesting take on RPG battling. Perhaps a game like that already exists somewhere and I don't know about it. I originally threw the game out when thinning out my DS collection but then picked it up again from an indie in Gloucester whilst out seeing folk, just in case I ever feel like trying it again.

[tyagi]

I like Too Human.

There, I said it.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Dynasty Warrior and other Musou games. I've only really played a couple but the main criticism is that it's just button mashing waves of identical enemies. Well sometimes, button mashing waves of identical enemies has it's appeal when you're bored of doing some platforming or rpg'ing or anything else. Nice diversions when you want to switch off and do something simple. That said, I could happily get by without playing them. Ninety Nine Nights was basically identical.

[deKay]

Chocobo Tales was amazing! I'm genuinely surprised it's generally thought of as a bad game.

[deKay]

I throughly enjoyed Hello Kitty Roller Rescue on the GC. Pretty sure most people would say that was crap. They're wrong, obviously.

Also, I still maintain Hi-Octane is better than any iteration of Wipeout you care to mention.

[Gabe]

Good call on Dark Sector, that was a decent game.

Some others I've enjoyed that spring to mind:

Conan - had really satisfying combat; had a real heft to it.
Frontlines: Fuel of War - Decent gunplay, interesting premise and looked nice enough.
Enchanted Arms - I know a lot of people hated the characters (I didn't), but it was a good RPG with tactical combat (plus an autoplay function too, which sped-up for any fights you knew you would win without any effort). Also had the Pokemon aspect to collecting the golems too, for those interested in that.
Timeshift - Another game where the premise helped carry it through for me. Decent enough third-person shooter with some interesting uses of the time mechanic.

[Dimahoo]

I love the Crashtime/Cobra 11 series although i don't keep it a secret.

[tssk]

I love the Crashtime/Cobra 11 series although i don't keep it a secret.

Yeeeeeessssss! I played the demo of Felony 11-79 to death on the PSOne!

[Dinobot]

Wii Music is amazing.

Wash your mouth out. It's wonderful.

LA Noire is possibly one of the worse games in memory that is actually liked by some people.
I hate the nuts off it yet some were all "Ohh nice faces" and "STORY!". Truly dreadful mind, for many reasons. It just shows you what a bit of marketing can do.

FIFA 12 and it's new defensive system is a total game killer. An absolute chore it takes the joy away from the game part of a football game.

Ones that I actually like? I could say EDF 2017 - yet I can't believe it's a crap game because of the way it throws so much stuff at you. And when you compare it to the clearly half-finished "polished" follow up, it's miles ahead with so much of what it does.

[earlymodernsteve]

I enjoyed Conan too. It was simple but felt right for the source material. And Chocobo Tales was a nice gentle RPG/card battler hybrid. I was going to add Rogue Warrior but I didn't enjoy the game so much as I enjoyed the terrible awfulness of it. I have a soft spot for generic 3rd person fighters like the opening post's. I really enjoyed Spyborgs on the Wii and would heartily recommend it to anyone. Plus you can pick it up for about the same price as a Creme Egg.

[tssk]

http://www.rllmukfor...really-enjoyed/ was a smilar topic as was http://www.rllmukfor...ilty-pleasures/ from 2004 but I love this sort of thread. I have Chocobo's Tales in my collection and I might play it soon now thanks to that post.

Other crap games I like

Cargo:The Quest for Gravity (PC) which is essentially Banjo Kazooie Nuts'n'Bolts. On crack.

Star Wars KOTOR 2 (PC) Broken. Totally broken. Once you have force push you are invincible. Unless you get blindsided by a bug. And the end was unfinished.

But...totally redeemed by having one of the best companion characters ever. Kreia.



An old bind woman with a tongue that could cut through titanium...she is one of the most measured, most complex characters ever to appear in a game. Her interaction made KOTOR2 for me one of the best rpg's of all time.

Evil Zone (PSone) So bad it's good anime fighting game.



Street Surfer (C64) A budget racing game about recycling.

Deus Ex:Invisible War (PC) With it's bonkers emergent behaviour engine One time in Egypt these guys that robbed me then stood too close to the barrel they were using to warm their hands with. Cue "arrrrgh! I'm burning!" and me calmly taking back my belongings from the charred remains.

[tssk]

I really enjoyed Spyborgs on the Wii and would heartily recommend it to anyone. Plus you can pick it up for about the same price as a Creme Egg.

Describe Spyborgs to us. What's it play like? What's it similar to? (I see this everywhere going for cheaps.)

[Gabe]

I actually really enjoyed The Bourne Conspiracy, despite not liking the demo at all.

And 007: Bloodstone - though I didn't rate the driving sections, the actual gunplay was solid, the plot felt like Bond and it was short enough that it didn't get repetitive.

Oh, and Rise of the Argonauts - that's a game I really, really loved. I know it wasn't well received at the time (one of the reasons being that it was too wordy - which never was a criticism levelled at Dragon Age) but I really bought into the setting and let myself become part of that world. The RPG stuff was quite light and the skill trees didn't have a particularly noticeable impact, but I don't care. It was great.

[Dinobot]

Growl the arcade game (you can get it on a PS2 bundle pack, can't remember which) is utter rubbish yet utterly mental fun, hilarious to boot.

[Asura]

Mine are the Star Wars The Force Unleashed games.

I never got the hate for them. Given, the story is adolescent fanfiction pish but I loved the combat. I literally never got tired of chucking enemies around, pulling TIE Fighters out of the air, using the force to do all kinds of hilarious stuff. By the time you're most of the way through either game you feel like such a badass! And the first level of the first one, when you're Darth Vader is just incredible.

Admittedly, I can see all of the design flaws they have - but I just felt the incredible fun of the combat made up for all of them.

[JoeK]

Although I don't think many folk thought it was truly awful, I do love Heavenly Sword.

Passionately.

I think it's just bloody wonderful.

[AlonzoUK]

Another one for Too Human - once I figured out the controls (took a while mind) the combat clicked. Could clear whole areas without dying - great fun.

[tssk]

Growl the arcade game (you can get it on a PS2 bundle pack, can't remember which) is utter rubbish yet utterly mental fun, hilarious to boot.

That's the one where you play as an angry Indiana Jones style ranger getting animals to attack smugglers yes?



"Who do you think you arrrrrrr"

[moosegrinder]

Yeah, I enjoyed Too Human too. The death animation can fuck off, mind.

[poppa_f]

I really enjoyed Dragon Age 2. Probably helped that I played it before trying Dragon Age Origins.
Episodic RPGs suit me down to the ground at the moment as I only have the odd hour here and there to play.
Found the combo system compelling enough to keep the combat interesting and actually found some the prosaic soap opera sub-plots quite entertaining, in a guilty pleasures kind of way

Spoiler

Aveline's romance with the watch guy, your sister dying in the deep roads etc

If they can combine the epicness of origins with the combat of 2, then 3 could be pretty special

[The-Plethora]

I ... actually like hard driving on the megadrive. Everyone seems to hate it but its one of my first go to games on my phone, I find the game in general more fun than the arcade.

[Gabe]

Mine are the Star Wars The Force Unleashed games.

I never got the hate for them. Given, the story is adolescent fanfiction pish but I loved the combat. I literally never got tired of chucking enemies around, pulling TIE Fighters out of the air, using the force to do all kinds of hilarious stuff. By the time you're most of the way through either game you feel like such a badass! And the first level of the first one, when you're Darth Vader is just incredible.

Admittedly, I can see all of the design flaws they have - but I just felt the incredible fun of the combat made up for all of them.

I only played the first one, but never really felt all that powerful purely because of the new ret-conned trooper types they introduced to explicitly nerf those powers.

I actually think Star Wars (generally, not just games) is really dull too.

[MrHendo]

And 007: Bloodstone - though I didn't rate the driving sections, the actual gunplay was solid, the plot felt like Bond and it was short enough that it didn't get repetitive.

I really enjoyed the EA Bond games on the last gen machines. Nothing special about them but they were good fun.

Ghost Squad on the Wii was probably seen as out of date tat but I loved it and played it to death. Lost count of the amount of playthroughs I did of it.

Also, I enjoy some of the soulless Gameloft clones doing the rounds. The Diablo clone is particularly good, at least the second one (Dungeon Hunter II) on iOS is.